calvinnme It is funny, sexy, exciting, and every bit as resonant today as 1935- really saying something for a post-Code picture.It's MGM of the period all the way. Bang bang bang, nonstop action, mile-a-minute dialogue. Basically a shameless retread of Red Dust, I actually like it a lot better than Red Dust. It's also got a dash of Shanghai Express, which is fine. Maybe it's the fact that I'm drawn to "souls at sea"" pictures and ensemble films about disparate groups thrown together by fate, their bizarre stories intertwining.And what an ensemble this film boasts: There's Harlow, who by now could act, working her sex-clown routine with total confidence- fierceness to the Nth degree. Acing scene after scene, playing off Gable and Wallace Beery and Hattie MacDaniel (who has a rare good role, although not as substantial as it could be) just wonderfully. She should have gotten a Best Actress nomination for this. Then there's Gable as Gable. Roz Russell is stuck playing one of the dour, humorless Brits MGM frequently cast her as in the thirties (see also Night Must Fall and The Citadel ). Donald Meek and Lewis Stone and Robert Benchley and plenty of others, all making the most out of their bits.The stories are tight, every character compelling, and great dialogue all wonderfully pieced together. I don't often agree with Leonard Maltin or find his assessments of films too astute, but he is completely correct when he calls China Seas "impossible to dislike."China Seas, a minor title in the classic film library, is the film to show to win people over to the "Black and White" side and show them how exciting and entertaining a classic movie can be.

canuckteach I hardly knew what to expect when I played this offering from a nifty 4-disc set of Harlow films from Turner-Classic.In this one, Cable, a naval commander, has tired of his skullery-maid-like former consort (Harlow), discarding her for a high-class prospect (Ros Russell). Harlow doesn't like it, and teams up with a crooked officer, Wallace Beery, who has cut a deal with some villainous pirates. This role required Harlow to be a semi-trashy blond bombshell, which fits her platinum blond persona (but she could do characters of a higher class, when required -- see 'Wife and Secretary' with Gable and Myrna Loy)** Spoilers below **Remember, though: the Hayes production code was now being enforced, which meant that Beery and Harlow could not profit from their crime.So, the good guys win, in the end, but Gable says he will stick with his pretty former-consort Harlow--even marry her--but first she must face the justice system for her role in an attempted theft. I doubt the original story ended that way, but the Code demanded that villains NOT prosper from their nefarious deeds - so, Harlow will face prison for 3 to 5, I guess. If made in 1932, that film would have ended with Gable suppressing the role Harlow played, and marrying her the same day, in a local church!Contrast this to 'Dinner at 8' made only a few years earlier with Harlow and Wallace Beery. Two (at least) of the female major players are guilty of indiscretions, but escape unscathed.China seas was a pleasant surprise, and featured a brutal storm at sea, done with tons of water and wind machines (no FX in those days)..Recommended. 8/10

mark.waltz A mixture of high comedy and hair raising drama, this entertaining Grand Hotel of the high seas is a mass collection of emotions. Captain Clark Gable is loved by two strong willed women: great lady Rosalind Russell and the cheap seeming Jean Harlow who longs to be classy but can't rise above crassness. The lecherous Wallace Beery is a gentleman of low class manners but hidden lust, and taking the opportunity of a possible capsizing storm to make his move on her. Other characters come in and out of the story and provide excellent support in varying character parts, and some shocking moments provide genuine horror straight out of a Karloff or Lugosi movie.Harlow is an absolute delight, sparkling with everybody from Gable, Beery and Russell to Hattie McDaniel as her lavishly dressed maid who thrills at the idea of skinny Harlow hiving her "full figure" an evening gown she intends to only take out "slightly" to fit in it. The little known Soo Yong may look like a porcelain doll but spits acid when ever in Harlow's presence. Also memorable are Lewis Stone as Gable's assistant, Robert Benchley as a drunken passenger and Dudley Digges as a nefarious crew member. Lavish and filled with a few brilliant moments (particularly the storm where a man is repeatedly run over by a rolling vehicle), this still fails to strike a really great cord because of its changing moods. Sometimes it's best to stick with one mood, although the irony of the ship being attacked by modern day pirates is rather timely.

theowinthrop The studios in the "Golden Age" of films loved to stick to successful formulas that worked for their actors and directors. Just go down the list of performers that you can recall: A fine actor like Basil Rathbone is either the heavy or villain, or Sherlock Holmes (but not, as he wished, Rhett Butler). Jean Harlow and Marlene Dietrich could not play normal housewives, nor could Joan Crawford play a stupid woman. Oliver Hardy could always have a wife, but never a happy marriage (and if it approached happiness, Stan Laurel would help destroy that). Lewis Stone, sterling character actor, only achieved permanent stardom when he inherited the role of Judge Hardy from Lionel Barrymore, and he would remain the perfect, wise father to Mickey Rooney in a dozen films. As for Barrymore, while he had a higher degree of stardom than Stone, he fell nicely into a niche as the original Dr. Leonard Gilespie, opposite Lew Ayres as Dr. Kildare.In 1932 MGM got the bright idea of making a dramatic film of Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel" with an all star cast (John and Lionel Barrymore, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, and Tully Marshall). The film won the best picture Oscar, so it became a standard for other MGM projects to copy. The best known is "Dinner At Eight" (both Barrymore brothers again, Beery again, Jean Harlow, Marie Dressler, Billy Burke, Edmund Lowe, Lee Tracy, Hersholt again). But "David Copperfield", "The Prisoner OF Zenda", and several other Selznick films, and "The Women" (with only a cast of actresses - Crawford, Shearer, Russell, Fontaine, Goddard, and Boland) followed the same formula with variants by the settings and plots of the films."China Seas" was an early example of the formula "all star" film, a "Grand Hotel" set at sea. The plot is varied: C. Aubrey Smith is having a cargo of gold shipped by his ship captained by Gable. The passengers include Harlow (who has had a long standing on-again, off-again romance with Gable), Russell (Gable's current love interest - a real English lady type), Beery (an untrustworthy gambler and thief - he may be planning to steal the gold), Robert Benchley (an American novelist on a permanent toot), Edward Brophy and Lillian Bond as a married couple on a tour (Ms Bond has her secrets from her husband), Akim Tamiroff (a man who knows how to take advantage of secrets), Dudley Digges (a self-satisfied and smug chief executive officer), and Lewis Stone (a former sea captain, now reduced in rank and a pariah due to an act of cowardice).The film is a lively mixture of comedy and tragedy, including the death of one of the villains. Harlow demonstrates an interesting way of playing cards and drinking that suggests more than the film shows. Benchley never appears clear eyed and sober throughout all the film. Stone, in a powerful moment, leaves the self-righteous Digges with a permanent black mark on his self-esteem. Gable and Beery show what the "boot" is, and how effective it is. This is a film where the activities of the cast are so involving you never get bored even when you see the film another time. And at the end, as the ship reaches port (as in "Grand Hotel"), life goes on as though nothing (including a pirate attack) ever even occurred.